Their meeting had gone even worse than he’d feared, and yet, he couldn’t help but grin when he replayed the memory loop in his head.
Layla wasn’t his usual type. She could never be described as busty, and yet, every girl should be so lucky to rock a tank top like her. She was blond, which was a plus. But it wasn’t the kind of blond Tommy usually liked. It wasn’t the glossy golden California blond the girls back home tried so hard to emulate. Funny to think he’d driven all the way to LA to be interested in a girl with hair the color of an Oklahoma wheat field.
Even though she clearly hated him, something about their meeting left him excited in a way he hadn’t felt for a while.
Delete my number, she’d said. Not a chance. He’d back off for now. Give her some space. Though he was serious about them helping each other. He just hoped she’d make it through the first cut.
He thought about contacting Aster. She and Layla were the only ones he’d connected with at the interview, but he doubted he’d get very far. She had too much of that high-maintenance Madison Brooks vibe. She’d probably just laugh in his face. Besides, Tommy had nothing to offer a girl like Aster, and he doubted she had anything to offer him other than a fat contacts list filled with spoiled rich preps who wouldn’t deign to step foot inside the Vesper.
Or would they?
Tommy watched as the male star of one of cable TVs biggest hits climbed out of a black convertible Porsche and ducked inside an organic café without notice. In Oklahoma, an actor of that caliber would’ve been mobbed. Yet in Venice, people were too cool to even acknowledge his presence.
LA operated on a whole other frequency, and if Tommy had any hope of making his mark, he’d have to find a way to tune in.
What if instead of trying to outwardly woo Madison—a task that was impossible at best—he concentrated on making the Vesper so hip, so illicit, so talked about, those rich preps got just curious enough to clamor for a walk on the wild side, Madison included. Kind of like the Los Feliz lifestyle tourists who used to come into Farrington’s.
It could work.
It could absolutely, 100 percent work.
For the first time since he’d secured the gig, he had an actual working plan and a damn good one at that.
Of course he couldn’t go it alone. He’d need Ira’s consent. But what better way to impress the old man than coming up with an idea that just might save them both from failure?
ELEVEN
ROYALS
Aster Amirpour sat at the formal dining room table, pushing her food around on her plate and ignoring the incessant chiming of her phone like the good, well-mannered, obedient girl Nanny Mitra raised her to be. Eighteen years old and she was still watched over by the same nanny who’d changed her diapers as a baby. It was so beyond ridiculous it ventured into preposterous, outrageous, absurd, ludicrous—
“You gonna answer that?” Her younger brother, Javen, who looked very much like the boy version of Aster except, damn him, his eyelashes were even longer and thicker, tilted his fork toward her iPhone.
“Of course not. We’re eating and that would be rude.” Aster returned his look with one of her own, before letting her gaze drift among the display of fine Irish linens, gleaming silver flatware, and her mother’s finest china place settings—fussy didn’t even begin to describe it. Even in her parents’ absence, her family’s more stodgy traditions raged on.
“Then can you at least silence it?” Javen bit off the tip of his asparagus spear and closed his eyes while he chewed. When Nanny Mitra decided to cook, a task that was usually left to the family’s personal chef, it was a rare and precious treat.
Aster silenced her phone and returned to the business of eating, or at least she pretended to eat. Her stomach was so jumpy with nerves and excitement it left no room for anything else. It was her first night on the job, and she had a plan that could put her in the lead. If Ira wanted the club packed with hot young bodies, then Aster would deliver everyone from her contacts list (and their contacts lists, and so on). Of course she didn’t have a shot in hell of getting Madison Brooks, much less anyone else on Ira’s list, but none of them did. It might have been premature, but she considered herself way ahead of the game.
Compared to the other contestants, she was the closest thing to Madison among them. They had so much in common, it was eerie. They were both girly girls, which meant people often overlooked their brains and ambition, they both had a healthy appreciation for the finer things in life (namely designer clothes and accessories), they both knew how to command the full attention of a room simply by entering, and they were both severely underestimated by people who refused to see them as anything more than a pretty face, and Aster couldn’t help but wonder if Ira had underestimated her too.
During the interview he’d blatantly assessed her like she was a piece of fine art he hoped to sell for a steep return. Which was fine since it clinched the job, but Aster was determined to prove she was more than a pretty face to be used as Night for Night bait. She wasn’t just playing to win—she was there to meet the kind of people who could boost her career, and yeah, as long as she was there, why not obliterate the rest of her competitors and leave her mark on the world?
“Aster, please—eat!” Nanny Mitra’s voice nudged Aster away from her thoughts and back to the table. She motioned toward Aster’s nearly full plate, her dark eyes narrowed, her perfectly lined and colored lips drooping into a frown. “You’re too skinny,” she scolded.
This again. Nanny wouldn’t be happy until Aster had dimpled thighs and a major muffin top. According to Nanny, not only did Aster not eat enough—too skinny!—but her weekly routine of tennis lessons and dance classes were doing more harm than good—too many muscles aren’t good for a girl! It was a never-ending battle Aster had no hope of winning.
Aster looked to Javen for support, but the smirk on his face made it worse. So she focused on picking at her lamb chops and pushing her potatoes around, but Nanny wasn’t fooled.
“Nice Persian boys don’t like skinny girls. You need to put some meat on your bones and fill out your curves.”
Aster warned herself to keep quiet, to humor Nanny and take a few bites—what could it hurt? But something inside her, something so weary of being lectured on all the ways she needed to change in order to be more appealing to Persian boys, wouldn’t be muzzled.
“So, let me get this straight—you’re asking me to eat even though I’m not hungry, so some random boy I don’t even know will find me pleasingly plump? And then what? He asks me to marry him, and I immediately say yes and forfeit all my dreams so I can produce a litter of babies and stay fat for him?” Her eyes met Nanny’s. She loved her, loved her like she loved her own mother, but sometimes her ideas were beyond comprehension, and they needed to be challenged. “Seriously, Nanny.” She tried to soften her voice and rein in her annoyance. “This isn’t the old country. People in LA covet a whole other look, a whole other life. Girls don’t eat to be more appealing to boys.”
“Though sometimes they refuse to eat to be more appealing to boys,” Javen piped in, causing Aster to laugh in spite of herself, and Nanny Mitra to fiddle with the gold locket at her neck that contained a picture of her long-deceased husband as she mumbled in Farsi under her breath.
“Too much skinny—too much skin always on display.” Nanny Mitra’s command of English, which was usually flawless, always faltered whenever she was confronted by a world moving too fast for her liking.